


DE Artfest day 9: Mermaid AU

by lastrideoftheday



Category: Detroit Evolution - Fandom, Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: DEArtfest, Detroit Evolution, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastrideoftheday/pseuds/lastrideoftheday
Summary: The beautiful moment where Lazzo and his girlfriend first meet - or, it would be, if she wasn't losing what's left of her sanity trying to comprehend why there's a merman wearing neon sunglasses and a feather boa in Detroit River.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	DE Artfest day 9: Mermaid AU

Jamie is pretty sure mermaids aren't supposed to have neon feather boas and red light-up sunglasses.  
This thought is followed by her wondering why that was the first coherent sentence that formed in her head, when she's also pretty sure mermaids aren't supposed to exist.

Mermaids? Merpeople? Or is mermaid the name of the race? Is "maid" a gender? All of these thoughts flash through Jamie's head before she can rein them in, and she desperately attempts to get her brain back on track. In front of her. Mermaid wearing a neon boa.

This one in particular is definitely a merman, at least. Or maybe a merboy. Or maybe they don't even call themselves that, maybe she's completely assuming things. Maybe she's hallucinating. That's also a possibility.

She considers that it's quite difficult for androids to hallucinate. Not a hallucination, then. Well. She keeps the possibility tucked away in a corner of her mind. Hypothesis untested, results inconclusive.

The mermaid, or rather merman, doesn't appear to have noticed her. Does this mean she has to initiate the conversation? She hates first-time social interaction. She supposes that she could just walk away, and pretend nothing ever happened. But that would be a sure-fire way to keep that hypothesis forever untested. And having that in a corner of her brain forever would be annoying as hell. She takes a deep breath, about to say "hello" or something boring to that effect, when the fence she's leaning on promptly breaks and she falls face-first off the pier into Detroit River.

She screams a very loud curse as soon as she surfaces, the freezing water causing unbearable pain to her sensitive processors, and scrabbles about in an undignified way while she tries to remember if there's anything about how to swim programmed into her memory banks. Unhelpfully, the only thing her memory gives her is the same thing it was giving her while she was being yeeted unceremoniously off a pier by an incredibly rude piece of fence breaking at exactly the wrong time, and that's the delightful piece of information that extreme cold will cause irreversable damage to her biocomponents if she's exposed to it for too long. Well, she doesn't see how she's supposed to avoid being exposed to the extreme cold of Detroit River in January when she's been dumped into it without warning.

She almost screams again as something soggy and tickly floats in front of her face, but stops herself just in time as she realises it's glowing neon. The next moment, she's being lifted up back onto the pier by a pair of arms that surely shouldn't be strong enough to do that if they belong to who she’s assuming they do. The moment after that, she's back on the pier, her hair already bouncing back into its frizzy shape and cold seawater running down the back of her neck.

Her gaze alights on her saviour. He looks even younger than she thought now she can see his face. The moment he notices she’s looking at him, his expression transforms into a cheesy grin. "Hey," he says.

This time, Jamie yells the curse at the top of her lungs. She just got saved by a _merman_? She plumps for the first question in her head. Well, the second, she already yelled the first. "Who are you?"

"Oh! Uh... my name's Lazzo."

"And you're a merman."

"Oh, yeah. He/him pronouns. And you?"

"I meant the "mer" part!" she exclaims. "And she/her - but that's not the point! You're a merman. Emphasis on the "mer"."

“Oh! Yeah. I am.”

She doesn’t know where to begin. She’s about to say something, then something else, and then she forgets what she was going to say, so she goes for the next thing that pops into her head. “You’re wearing a feather boa. And neon sunglasses.”

Lazzo’s hand goes to his sunglasses. “I thought they looked cool,” he mumbles.

“I’m not saying they don’t look cool, I’m asking why a f… a fricking merman is wearing them! I mean, I don’t know much about merpeople - in fact, I didn’t think they existed until five minutes ago - but I thought you were supposed to, I don’t know, be all graceful or something. Not look like you’ve come from a rave.”

“So what you’re saying is, they _do_ look cool.” Lazzo is grinning mischievously.

“I wasn’t… ugh!” Jamie groans in irritation. Lazzo keeps grinning, which annoys her even more. She grits her teeth, and tries to keep the conversation on track. “What are you doing in Detroit River?”

“What were _you_ doing in Detroit River?”

“Really wishing I wasn’t, that’s what! You think I jumped in on purpose? In January?”

“Oh.” He genuinely looks like this hadn’t occurred to him. “Good job I was there to save you, then.”

Jamie is about to make a huffy retort in response, when she realises maybe she did owe him one for that. Even if the only reason she fell in in the first place was because her brain was too busy trying to comprehend the sight of a merperson in a neon feather boa to concentrate on staying on the pier. “Yeah,” she mutters. She hesitates for a moment. “Th –“ She stops. Lazzo is staring, an expression of concern on his face. “What are you looking at?”

"Your arms!"

Jamie looks down to where he's pointing, puzzled. And then she noticed what he's looking at, and swears. Her arms are covered in patches where her skin has stripped away, revealing stark white plastic underneath. Worst of all are her hands, which have gone completely white all over. She tries to flex her fingers, and winces at how slow the movement is. "They're busted," she says, her heart sinking.

"Busted?"

"Androids really aren't built for prolonged immersion in Detroit River in January."

"Oh, man."

She runs a quick status check, and finds that, in fact, a dip in freezing cold water wasn’t too healthy for several of her other biocomponents either. “I need medical attention," she realises.

"Yeah, you do," says Lazzo, as if this has just dawned on him as well.

"I'm gonna go now."

"Right."

She sighs, and fixes her eyes on Lazzo. "But you'd better be here this time tomorrow. I'm coming back."

He perks up. "Aw, really?"

She puts her face in her hands. "Not for a social call, idiot! Because I want to know what a merman's doing in Detroit River!"

His shoulders droop. "Oh... I was hoping... you seem pretty cool..."

He looks so deflated that Jamie finds herself backtracking. "I mean... it can be a social call as well if you want..." But then adds on hurriedly, trying to sound as stern as possible, "But you'd better be there, alright? No leaving me hanging!"

"Yeah! Yeah, I'll be there!" He perks up again. Jamie has run out of things to say, so she just turns and starts walking. And then running. And then, as she remembers something, she turns her head and yells back over her shoulder: "If I need new arms, you're getting them!"  
  



End file.
